Home Ec
by ASadisticWhim
Summary: Dean suddenly felt like he had missed something by always skipping home ec. Teen!chesters. Reviews are appreciated.


Author's Note: Hello everyone! Okay, so I depressed myself with the last fan fic I wrote. So I had to write something a little more light-hearted. This is a Teen!chester fic. I can't seem to stop playing in the sandbox that is the boys past. Reviews are appreciated.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. All rights belong to Kripke and the CW and all the other corporate people who make the show we love.

***

Home Economics

***

The first time, Sam came home from high school with a split lip. Dean didn't ask. Sam didn't tell. As Sam walked through the door, Dean continued to flip through television channels as he listened to his brother rummage around in the kitchen. He heard the fridge open and close, the hum as the engine clicked back on.

"Hey, Sam," Dean called. "Get me a Coke?" Channel fifty, flip, fifty one, flip, fifty two, flip. An old woman, flip, grass, flip, animals mating, flip, an audience clapping, flip. Dean paused on a Victoria Secret commercial. Then it was over. Flip. They had a hundred channels and absolutely nothing on.

The couch sagged next to Dean, and a Coke was held in his line of vision. He stopped his channel surfing to grab the offered drink. "Thanks," Dean said with a glance at his brother. Sam held a can of cold soda to his swollen lip, eyes staring at the TV. "No more ice?" he asked.

"Nope," Sam said. "Anything good on?"

Fifty eight, flip, fifty nine, flip, sixty, flip. Cookies, flip, Barbie, flip, penguins, flip, world blowing up, flip.

"Nope," Dean said.

***

The second time, Sam had a black eye. Or what was going to be a black eye. Dean had watched the development of many black eyes on his kid brother's face, some of them caused by his own hand. Not that Sam didn't give as good as he got.

It was the reason why Dean still didn't ask. But he did pause in washing dishes to quirk an eyebrow at his brother as Sam walked into the kitchen, and dropped his book bag into one of the kitchen chairs. Sam shrugged on his way to the fridge. Dean turned the hot water back on and started scrubbing the frying pan again. He never realized burned cheese was so difficult to scrape off.

"Think Dad will be home tonight?" Sam asked as he dropped some ice into a plastic baggy and then wrapped it in a dishtowel. Their father had been gone three days.

"I don't know," Dean said with a shrug and a glance up. Sam leaned against the cabinet next to the sink, pressing the make-shift icepack to his eye.

"What was it he was goin' after this time?" Sam asked.

"Poltergeist, I think," Dean said. He poured more soap onto the bottom of the pan, more into the sponge. His hands were covered in suds. His blue shirt had dark splashes of water on it.

"And why didn't you go with him?" Sam asked.

"Because you're fifteen and the hunt was two states away." Dean said. He looked at the pan, the cheese still stuck in place. He wondered how much a new frying pan cost.

"You know the cheese will probably come off if you soak it for a while," Sam said, his gaze falling on the pan in the sink.

"What?" Dean said. He couldn't help but look incredulously at his brother.

Dean watched his brother's one visible eye roll, sure that both eyes were completing the action. "Soak the pan. You know, fill it up with water and soap and leave it for a little while?"

"And that works?" Dean asked. He didn't really want to buy a new frying pan. His money could be better used on the Impala. "And how do you know this?"

"Because I'm fifteen, and have to take home-economics three times a week," Sam said.

Dean laughed as he filled the pan with soapy water. "Dude, you actually go to that class? That class is for girls!"

Sam flashed a wide smile, dimples and all. It was not an innocent smile. "Exactly," he said, and icepack still held in place, hefted his bag from the chair and left the room.

Dean suddenly felt like he had missed something by always skipping home ec.

***

The third time, Sam had a concussion. So Dean had to ask. It was damn hard to get through his brother's defenses in hand-to-hand combat. Dean knew that because he had been Sam's sparring partner since the kid turned thirteen and started growing like a weed. He had made sure his brother was damn difficult to injure.

So when Dean got a call at the garage he was working at part-time from the high school nurse asking him to pick up his slightly concussed brother, Dean started worrying about whether or not Sam was going to be charged for murder. The idea ran through his head to stop by the small house they were renting to pack their things before heading to the school. He pushed the thought away. Surely the nurse would have mentioned cops if there had been any plan to press charges.

In the school office, signing his name onto the visitor's registrar, Dean was thankful they had moved since he had graduated. The secretary at his old school would never have smiled at him like that. She would have frowned and told him he was corrupting his younger brother. But this was a completely different place, and this grandmotherly type woman with short gray hair and too thick glasses didn't know him.

There was a cheerleader standing outside the nurses' office. She was petite, with long dark brown hair pulled into a tight ponytail. She leaned against the wall, staring at something in her hands, and looked miserable. Dean wondered if Sam had beaten up her boyfriend.

She looked up as he approached. "Are you Sam's brother?" the girl asked, standing straight. Her hand clenched around the object she had been staring at.

Dean froze, wondering if he was going to get a tongue lashing on his brother's behalf. He resigned himself to his fate before he answered. It wouldn't be the first time a cheerleader yelled at him. "I am." He said.

The girl's face crumpled, tears springing to her bright blue eyes. "Listen, I'm so sorry." She swiped at the tears. Dean stared, mouth agape. He didn't know what to do. He thought he was going to get yelled at, not cried on and apologized to. The girl continued. "Andy can be such a dick, I swear. I never thought he'd do that to Sam."

As the girl rambled, Dean's concern for his younger brother went up a notch. The nurse had said his brother was slightly concussed. Now he wondered if it was worse, and the nurse just hadn't wanted to panic him over the phone.

"Anyway," the girl sniffed. "Tell Sam I'm really sorry. And I'll make him something good next time he's in home ec. Oh, and give him this?" She held out the object that had been in her hands, a small pinwheel-folded note. He wondered if Sam knew he had a cheerleader crying over him.

Dean took the note. "Uh…Sure." He said. He still wanted to know why she wasn't yelling at him for her beat-up boyfriend. The girl was obviously sure his brother had his ass handed to him. Dean wanted to know how and why, when he knew Sam was more than capable in hand-to-hand.

"Thanks," the girl smiled. "I have to get back to class. If I skip too many they won't let me go to the game tonight." And then she was gone and Dean was left staring at the note in his hand. Since when did cheerleaders write notes to his geek brother? And had the girl mentioned home ec?

***

In the Impala, on the drive home, Dean asked. "Since when did you forget how to fight, Sam?" Dean had been relieved that his brother really was only slightly concussed, plus a little more bruised and battered than he had been when he left that morning. But it wasn't anything serious. Dean's relief was pushed back by bubbling anger when the nurse told him that Sam had taken the worse beating. What was the point of all the training if his brother didn't use it?

"I didn't forget how to fight," Sam sighed. He leaned against the passenger side door, forehead pressed to the cool window, eyes closed.

"Oh no? Then why did even the nurse basically tell me you had your ass handed to you?" Dean asked, not taking his eyes off the road. Dean remembered that he had to try to be reasonable. His brother loved reasonable. "Me and Dad taught you to fight, use it." Dean thought that was good.

"You taught me to fight monsters, Dean," Sam said. "This was a person." There was a line in there somewhere that Dean didn't understand. But Sam's voice was raised, a signal he was on his way to being upset.

"I don't really think that matters. If someone takes a swing at you, you swing right back," Dean said. He thought that was reasonable too.

"I made sure I got a few good punches in," Sam half mumbled, both indignant and embarrassed. "I didn't mean to get a concussion."

There was silence as Dean pulled the car over to the side of the road, and shifted into park. He stared at his brother. "Are you really telling me that you let yourself get beat-up?"

"No." It was dangerously close to a whine. Sam sat up straight, squinting in the midday sunlight. Dean continued to stare, and Sam fidgeted. "Maybe," Sam finally said.

"Why?" Dean asked. Sometimes his brother baffled him. Why would anyone ever let themselves get beat-up? "You can fight."

"Do you know what I could do if I really fought?" Sam asked. He was staring at his hands, and Dean wondered if his brother was imagining it.

Yes, Dean knew what could happen if his brother really fought. Dean had plenty of his own memories of fights, when a punch had landed too well and the body had been too still after. He had been thinking about it when he had been on his way to the high school. But he had forgotten that this was Sam, not himself. Sam didn't fight. Sam wouldn't have been able to live with himself if he had really hurt someone else. There was a line Sam lived behind that had never been drawn for Dean.

Dean ran a hand over his face and sighed. "So, how did you get the concussion?"

Sam snorted and looked out the windshield at the cars passing by. "From a locker."

"What?" Dean asked. His fingers gripped the bottom of the steering wheel in front of him.

"He pushed me into a locker and I hit my head." Sam said, finally making eye contact.

"That's it?" Dean said, not really believing.

Sam nodded. "That's it."

"That's…" Dean couldn't find the right word. Sam got into a fight, and the worst injury came from banging his head on some metal. It didn't really make a story worth bragging about.

"Pathetic, I know." Sam finished for him with a shrug.

"Did you know you had a cheerleader crying over you?" Dean asked, suddenly remembering the object in his coat pocket. "She asked me to give this to you." He tossed the pinwheel-shaped note into his brother's lap.

Sam picked up the note and held it in front of him. "Tammy," Sam said.

Dean put the car into drive and looked over his shoulder for traffic. "What, you have more than one cheerleader who writes you notes?" He asked as he pulled onto the road.

He saw Sam shrug. "Clara folds notes like boxes, not pinwheels."

Dean didn't ask who Clara was. He wasn't sure he was ready for the truth. Dean listened to the crinkle of paper as he drove. "What's it say?" he asked when he glanced to find his brother grinning stupidly at the paper.

Sam held up the paper as if Dean could read it while he was driving. "They're going to convince the teacher to let them make me pie in home ec class."

Dean felt his jaw drop for the second time that day. "Pie?" he asked, his gaze shooting between his brother and the road.

Sam nodded at him, grinning. "Pie." Sam carefully refolded the note.

Within a few minutes, Dean pulled into their driveway. "Pie?" he said again as he turned off the car and stared at Sam.

"Pie." Sam confirmed. He opened his door and stepped out. Then, before closing the car door, he leaned back in to meet Dean's stare and said: "Too bad you always skipped home ec, huh, Dean?"


End file.
